Corruption, the grey economy and a dysfunctional administration - those are the three biggest obstacles to business in the Western Balkans. And it isn't some outside NGO saying it, but Branko Azeski, head of the Economic Chamber, speaking from Brussels, in front of 500 representatives of European institutions, the business community and the civil sector.

Azeski spoke at a debate on EU enlargement organised by the European Economic and Social Committee. According to the research he cited, more than 90 percent of companies in the region point to precisely these three factors as the biggest barrier to business development and to new investment. To them he added the region's underdeveloped gas and transport infrastructure and its weaknesses in the rule of law.

The message stings precisely because it comes from within. When a businessman who has worked in the region for decades says corruption and the grey economy are strangling growth, that is not a political narrative - it is a diagnosis from a man who pays the consequences. And that is the difference between a report from Brussels, easily brushed off as foreign meddling, and the words of someone from our own yard.

Azeski stressed that the Western Balkans' integration into the EU must go hand in hand with concrete reforms that create predictable conditions for doing business and enable faster convergence with the European market. Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos, for her part, repeated that enlargement remains a strategic priority for the Union.

A strategic priority - a phrase we have been hearing for years while the process stands still. The problem, as Azeski himself shows, is not only in Brussels. It is here too, in the institutions that are supposed to carry out the reforms everyone talks about and few actually do. Does the government really want predictable conditions for business, or does predictability get in the way of some other interests?